REVIEW: Master Gardener (2023, dir. Paul Schrader)

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 107 mins

UK Distributor: Vertigo Releasing

WHO’S IN MASTER GARDENER?

Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell, Esai Morales, Erika Ashley, Rick Cosnett, Victoria Hill, Amy Le, Eduardo Losan

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Paul Schrader (director, writer), Amanda Crittenden, David Gonzales and Scott LaStaiti (producers), Devonté Hynes (composer), Alexander Dynan (cinematographer), Benjamin Rodriguez Jr. (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A meticulous gardener (Edgerton) finds the secrets of his dark past beginning to resurface…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MASTER GARDENER?

Throughout his long career, Paul Schrader has had a vicious appetite for stories about anti-heroes. His scripts for Martin Scorsese classics Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are led by protagonists who are far from what one would normally consider decent and good, his own projects as writer-director like American Gigolo and Hardcore feature leads who are in their own way deeply flawed, and even the ones with heavily religious themes – such as his own movie First Reformed and his script for Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ – depict their main characters (yes, even Jesus) as fallible figures.

It’s easy to see the appeal to go with an anti-hero, for they are generally more interesting and complex than the regular squeaky-clean protagonist, but Schrader’s continued use of them all across his career has made it less surprising whenever he decides to make yet another movie with that concept. This is especially apparent in his latest film Master Gardener, which often feels like Schrader is not necessarily on auto-pilot but is certainly coasting on his own familiar traits, in ways that make this feel more like a collection of the filmmaker’s greatest hits rather than its own wholly satisfying film.

Said to be the final part of a loose trilogy that also includes First Reformed and Schrader’s previous film The Card Counter, Master Gardener focuses on a man named Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton), a horticulturalist who oversees the development and organisation of a beautiful flower garden on a fanciful estate, owned by wealthy dowager Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). Narvel is meticulous about every aspect of his job, knowing all the little details about each and every flower he and his co-workers plant across the garden, as well as of his own life, from his all-too neat short haircut complete with side partings, to living alone in an on-site cottage where he spends his evenings jotting down general thoughts into a journal (just another one of the most recognisable traits within Schrader’s gallery of anti-heroes). One day, he is asked by Norma to take on her estranged grand-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell), who has been dabbling in drugs since the passing of her mother, as his new gardening apprentice, which leads to a growing bond between the two as she gets better and better in the job. However, when Maya is subject to abuse from local drug dealers, Narvel is compelled to do something to protect his ward, even if it means revisiting some unwanted personality traits from the life he led before he became infatuated with gardening.

You see, Narvel – and this isn’t really a spoiler since it’s revealed pretty early on in the movie – was once a neo-Nazi. Flashbacks later on in the film show him in full Proud Boy mode, executing Black civilians as well as alleged informants against his group, while in the present the upper half of his body is still covered in swastika tattoos and white supremacy slogans. As you can imagine, this makes the relationship between him and biracial Maya a little bit awkward, but racial tension exists well beyond that here, since this garden that they both work on clearly has roots (no pun intended) in the history of slave plantations, with Weaver’s wealthy Haverhill at times acting a bit like Sarah Paulson’s cruel character in 12 Years a Slave, dishing out backhanded compliments to her mixed-race grand-niece that barely hide her prejudiced disdain. Like most of the flowers that Narvel and his co-workers plant throughout the movie, there is certainly a lot of stuff going on underneath the surface, but for whatever reason Schrader is reluctant to dig much deeper into these themes and aspects of the main characters, and sticks firmly to the familiar anti-hero template that he has become known for.

Schrader’s script and direction plays it fairly safe – which is odd to say about a film where the protagonist was once a murderous neo-Nazi – and strangely stilted, with numerous scenes dumping paragraphs of exposition onto the viewer without much liveliness in many of the performances, which are awkwardly staged like they’re acting in a community theatre production. That isn’t to say that the acting itself is bad, because it’s quite the opposite – Joel Edgerton is incredibly engaging here, as are supporting turns from Sigourney Weaver and Quintessa Swindell – but the direction that these performers have been given all but sucks the energy out of the room, leaving them with little chemistry or charm to work with. Also not on their side is that they’re playing characters who are no different than the ones from many of Schrader’s other works, so when one or more of them reveal some darker and more sinister edges, in the back of your mind you’re thinking about how films like Taxi Driver and First Reformed revealed them in much more surprising and provocative ways.

Very rarely does Master Gardener feel like it’s legitimately doing something outside the filmmaker’s comfort zone, which makes it hard to see as a compelling product of its own. The stakes are surprisingly low here, with the stilted writing and direction making it hard to buy the drama since it feels awkward in its delivery, and the way that it ends is by shoehorning in a major revelation in the closing minutes about something that appears to have suddenly taken place off-screen, which caused a few people in my screening to actually laugh out loud at its absurdity. Aside from the committed performances, there’s disappointingly little about this film that truly engages, settling for a by-the-numbers Schrader anti-hero narrative that focuses on the least interesting aspects rather than what could have really made this an intricate and compelling character study.

It’s mostly just Paul Schrader doing his best Paul Schrader impersonation, and surprisingly it’s not a particularly great one at that.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Master Gardener is more of a collection of writer-director Paul Schrader’s trademark anti-hero narrative traits than a satisfying feature in its own right, with some strong performances doing little to combat the awkwardly stilted filmmaking and lack of interest in its wider political themes.